Saturday, March 31, 2007

This Summer is the Summer of Threequels. This word may be made up but it is supposed to mean the 3rd movie in a trilogy, usually containing the number 3 in the title. For Whatever Reason, the Summer of 2007 will be full of the releases of really bad movie Threequels. Here is my list of movie Threequels released (or planned for release) this summer and the review (or expected review) of each:

List of Threequels in Summer '07:Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - Not quite as bad as 2, but nowhere near as good as 1.Shrek 3 -Why are they still making these?Spiderman 3 -Why so many villains? Why so many unresolved conflicts? Why so many flashbacks?Rush Hour 3 -Wow. The world could have lived without this entire series.Ocean's 13 -Should be called "Ocean's Eleven 2" and we can all just pretend Ocean's 12 never happened.Bourne (#3) Ultimatum-Wow. I did not know people could be killed with produce.& the 1 that doesn't even know it's a Threequel= Surf's Upor Animated Penguin Movie #3Some Might Call it a Stretch, but I Label Surf's Up as the 3rd in another Trilogy:It's the Threequel to The Year Shia LeBeouf Dispels his Disney Channel personaa laJT and Xtina by Being in Real Movies Series. In case you missed it, the first 2 installments to this Trilogy were Disturbia and Transformers. Even Steven has been busy in 2007.

Some movies are good enough that there needs to be a sequel. Some even deserve a whole series. But in most cases, it is pretty understood that movies should stop after 1. Here is my brief list of movies that should have stopped at 1 but did not:

Monday, March 12, 2007

I was asked by a friend to compile a list of the books that were important for him to read in order to be a Literate and Contributing member of modern culture.This is my first attempt -- The main criteria for this list was to cover the books that are referenced either directly or in allusion in the literary community. For obvious reasons, that turned out to include all the "staple" books that are required reading for middle school and high school students. NOTE: This is not a listing of "great books," or even "good books," and not a list of my favorite books, which would be MUCH different. This list is designed to guide young readers in their desire to cover the [quote, unquote] literary basics.

In alphabetical order by the first non-“the” in the book title.

1984--George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer--Mark Twain

A Farewell to Arms--Ernest Hemingway

A Lesson Before Dying--Ernest J. Gaines

A Separate Peace--John Knowles

A Tale of Two Cities--Charles Dickens

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland--Lewis Carroll

All the King’s Men--Robert Penn Warren

The Ambassadors--Henry James

An American Tragedy--Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm--George Orwell

As I Lay Dying--William Faulkner

Atlas Shrugged--Ayn Rand

The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass

Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman--Ernest J. Gaines

The Awakening--Kate Chopin

Beloved--Toni Morrison

Bless Me, Ultima--Anaya Rudolfo

Brave New World--Aldous Huxley

The Bride Price--Buchi Emecheta

Brideshead Revisited--Evelyn Waugh

The Brothers Karamazov--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Call of the Wild--Jack London

Candide--Voltaire

The Catcher in the Rye--J. D. Salinger

Cat’s Cradle--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Catch-22--Joseph Heller

The Chosen--Chaim Potok

The Clan of the Cave Bear--Jean Auel

The Color Purple-- Alice Walker

The Count of Monte Cristo--Alexander Dumas

Crime and Punishment--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Deliverance--James Dickey

Democracy--Joan Didion

The Divine Comedy--Dante

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?--Philip K. Dick

Doctor Zhivago--Boris Pasternak

Don Quixote--Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde--Robert Louis Stevenson

Ellen Foster--Kaye Gibbons

Empire of the Sun--J. G. Ballard

The End of the Affair--Graham Greene

Ender’s Game--Orson Scott Card

Ethan Frome--Edith Wharton

Faust--Goethe

Flowers for Algernon--Daniel Keyes

The Fountainhead--Ayn Rand

Frankenstein--Mary Shelley

The Giver--Lois Lowry

Go Tell It on the Mountain--James Baldwin

Gone with the Wind--Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath--John Steinbeck

Great Expectations--Charles Dickens

The Great Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Grendel--John Gardner

Gulliver’s Travels--Jonathon Swift

Heart of Darkness--Joseph Conrad

The Hobbit--J. R. R. Tolkien

House Made of Dawn--N. Scott Momaday

In Country--Bobbie Ann Mason

The Invisible Man--H. G. Wells

Invisible Man--Ralph Ellison

Ivanhoe--Sir Walter Scott

Jane Eyre--Charlotte Bronte

The Jungle--Upton Sinclair

Kindred--Octavia Butler

The Kitchen God’s Wife--Amy Tan

The Last of the Mohicans--James Fenimore Cooper

The Left Hand of Darkness--Ursula K. Le Guin

Les Miserables--Victor Hugo

Less Than Zero--Bret Easton Ellis

Like Water for Chocolate--Laura Esquivel

Lord of the Flies--William Golding

Love Medicine--Louise Erdrich

Moby Dick--Herman Melville

Moll Flanders--Daniel Defoe

The Naked and the Dead--Norman Mailer

Of Mice and Men--John Steinbeck

The Old Gringo--Carlos Fuentes

The Old Man and the Sea--Ernest Hemingway

On the Road--Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest--Ken Kesey

Out of Africa--Isak Dinesen

Pride and Prejudice--Jane Austen

The Prince--Niccolo Machiavelli

The Red Badge of Courage--Stephen Crane

The Remains of the Day--Kazuo Ishiguro

The Return of the Native--Thomas Hardy

Robinson Crusoe--Daniel Defoe

Roots: The Story of an American Family--Alex Haley

The Scarlet Letter--Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Screwtape Letters--C. S. Lewis

Shogun: A Novel of Japan--James du Maresq Clavell

Slaughterhouse Five--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The Slave Dancer--Paula Fox

Something Wicked this Way Comes--Ray Bradbury

Song of Solomon--Toni Morrison

The Sound and the Fury--William Faulkner

The Stranger--Albert Camus

Summer of My German Soldier--Bette Greene

The Sun Also Rises--Ernest Hemingway

The Sweet Hereafter--Russell Banks

Ten Little Indians--Agatha Christie

Tess of the d’Urbervilles--Thomas Hardy

Their Eyes Were Watching God--Zora Neale Hurston

Things Fall Apart--Chinua Achebe

The Time Machine--H. G. Wells

To Kill a Mockingbird--Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse--Virginia Woolf

Treason--Orson Scott Card

Treasure Island--Robert Louis Stevenson

V.--Thomas Pynchon

War and Peace--Leo Tolstoy

The Waste Land--T. S. Eliot

Watership Down--Richard Adams

The World According to Garp--John Irving

Wuthering Heights--Emily Bronte

I was going to keep this list down to 100 books, but there are probably closer to 120. I would be interested to see submissions from readers, because I know I left off some that were important (i.e.: everybody's read them). Scan through and see if your favorites are on the list.